Influenza and Inequality: One Town's Tragic Response to the Great Epidemic of 1918

Introduction

Introduction Norwood, Massachusetts, is, in many ways, the quintessential New England town. It started as a village with a mill, surrounded by small farms. In the late nineteenth century it became an industrial center run by Yankee captains of industry and populated by immigrant workers. Originally, Norwood was part of the older community of Dedham, founded in 1636 and known as the South Parish or South Dedham. In 1872, its industries beginning to grow, it became an independent township.1 The immigrant populations of Norwood shaped its new identity. First came the Germans, who in the mid-nineteenth century were attracted by the Everett furniture factory and the Winslow and Smith tanneries. Then came the Irish, who helped construct the railroad vital to industry, and stayed to work at the tanneries and the Morrill Ink Works, both located along the Neponset River. A divided and stratified society of ethnic enclaves and elite neighborhoods soon emerged. The families of the community’s businessmen, bankers, and officials resided primarily within a six-block radius to the west of the central business district, in an area known as “Christian Hill”; the owners of the larger factories built mansions on grand estates of former farmland . Enclaves called “Dublin,” “Cork City,” and “Germantown” sprang up at the northern and southern edges of the community. These ethnic neighborhoods were separate worlds, complete with modest homes, small shops and businesses, churches and social halls. They were within walking distance of the factories where laborers found steady employment. In the 1890s, the tannery and ink mill had been joined by two large printing establishments, Plimpton Press and Norwood Press, and a roofing plant which was a subdivision of Bird & Son. Together they made Norwood one of the region’s most important industrial communities. The new town which in 1872 had a population of 1,825 had by 1892 doubled in size to 3,732; by 1900, it was approximately 6,000. The final decade of the nineteenth century   Introduction brought an influx of immigrants from Sweden and Finland, most of whom relocated to a small district in south central Norwood known as “Swedeville.” This neighborhood, with its ethnic churches, markets , social organizations, and bathhouses, swiftly replicated the ethnic enclave pattern characteristic of earlier immigrations. While Dublin, Cork City, Germantown, and Swedeville were populated by workers who were the town’s economic backbone, their employers, the Christian Hill residents and the elites who lived on family estates, controlled Norwood’s civic life and politics. In their daily dealings, they perceived the immigrant laborers as economically essential but also considered these new residents as ignorant and backward, not unlike children. These prejudices were well known and the immigrants kept to themselves. At the turn of the twentieth century, a new influx of immigrants disrupted this relative calm. East and South Europeans, mostly Lithuanian , Polish, and Italian immigrants, fleeing upheaval and oppression , poured into the United States in general and Norwood in particular , attracted by employment opportunities. They were joined by displaced Syrians and Lebanese. In 1910, Norwood had more than 8,000 residents, and as that decade neared an end, the numbers surged to nearly 12,000. As the foreign-born residents constituted an ever increasing percentage of the town’s population, a housing crisis erupted. These latest arrivals found lodgings in the southernmost part of town, nicknamed “the Flats,” where tenements and multifamily homes were hastily constructed and immediately occupied. The South Norwood neighborhood was crowded; routine sanitation and public health services were lacking; and the language and customs of the inhabitants were strange. To the established community, South Norwood was like a foreign country, and its residents were increasingly viewed as the source of social problems and political unrest. One of the most ambitious and far-reaching responses to this influx of immigrants across the country was the progressive movement which, among other things, attempted to answer the question posed by a Norwood newspaper editorialist in regard to the newcomers: “What are you going to do to make them understand the United States and local government?”2 The progressive philosophy combined two strains of American social thought: a belief in “scientific answers Introduction  to social problems” and a search for “unified moral ideals.”3 With numerous instances of governmental abuse, inefficiency, and political corruption coming to light, reformers identified ward politics and the accompanying patronage system as the main problems. Progressives vowed to take governmental power away...